The Freeway to the Interior

Many of the men of old died on their travels…
– Matsuo Bashō

Time is pissed in torrents
Over the edge of the world
And into a plastic barrel
At the foot of the universe.

The weather is shit,
And the city looks as though
God wiped His ass in it.

See-through plastic bags mostly,
pastel shades: makes the desert
seem pixilated as it zooms past:

a beach without sea, not ochres
and browns, nor windblown dunes
and ridges as you'd imagine,

but tussocky, silty sand, that’s pale,
bilious green, significantly silica,
and respirable in rasping doses.

In the desert there is no recurrently
Flowing water—hence no Heraclitus:
You can step in the same wadi
Again and again and again.

by P. B. Lyons

Private Moon

by A. J. Kaufmann

for she loves still
humble beauty
no time no apartments
drying these grounds of departure
memories forward the taste
years - dewdrops
served early
chrysanthemums
private moon
the guardian
arranged and arrived
on eastern waves
without home
silken
anxious
reflection
of miserable
lotuses
color her flames

spiders and crows

by Derek Richards

ellen was my older sister
for two hours
of slush puddles and stinging promise.
upon learning my poetic intentions,
she carved a question mark
into a snowbank,
you'll need this alot

when i am able to imagine ellen,
sharp winter rain
resembles falling spiders,
leather boots trudging through silk,
belly-up flies exposed
as patches of asphalt.
i'm reminded often of the siblings
i've lost with each season.

when you find somebody,
somebody who comforts you,
dig in your heels
it's this voice, smooth dirty ice,
knotting my throat with
an articulate ache,
as familiar as crows perched on wires,
black warnings for bad days.

my last impression of ellen
colored me old-man pale,
she was red-knit hat, yellow stockings,
a memory preceding departure.
odd moments catch me tearful
over question marks
and the slow fade of children.


*originally published in Cantaraville

Hands.

by Danielle Searby

The dirt under my nails has turned them black.
My nails begin to rot and fall.
Scratching at the bottom of the barrel has calloused my hands.
The nicotine fingers are pretty compared to this.
The lines of time outlined on my hand
seem to move with every passing year.
Sometimes they move like rivers overflowing but
they always return to the same place when the flood subsides.
My fractured wrists have let me down.
I can't pick up anything to help myself.
My hands betray my desires.

WOULDN'T YOU LOVE TO HAVE ME

by RC Miller

spread out on your couch and playing with myself
as if I'm real. My mother used to push me in my stroller, but
she grew tired of paying ridiculous property taxes. She dug
deep into that nativity scene and made exactly the piece of
art that enables rampant pedophilia. It's one of the things
my boyfriend tries to hide. There's nothing even remotely
Catholic about his cock now buttward and not been in
America for long. I stick it to the back of my mouth and
feel cuter than a puppy without a nervous system.


R.C.'s blog: http://visionblues.blogspot.com/

Poem For A Political Poet

by Doug Draime

What honor is there?
The lie creates idols of
death.
Why hang the grave clothes of the
‘old man’ on the new man?
And, from where, brother poet, does your
new man emerge?
Ideas? Concepts of Cultural Global
Political Revolution?

Politics is a grotesque lie.
Politics is a vexation of the spirit.
Politics is an affliction of the mind.
Politics is the “devil’s” street game.
I see the rage in your face.
I am grounded with the brilliant rage of your poems,
into the sense of your sensibilities..
Your language has always been my language; your
words I know from the very blood of my soul.

Often we react to the
oppressor with stupidity. When we
don’t acknowledge that stupidity,
it becomes iniquitous, and the psychotic
barbarians resume their dance in
praise of the dying atmosphere,
as once intelligent men
and women
pay homage to dictators, liars, butchers,
who promise equality, liberation; men
who would cut the throats of your children for
an idea.
Men whose souls rot and stink with
the hatred of innocence and regenerated life,
men who collectively tortured, enslaved,
and murdered millions upon millions of people,
men who would pour wax over poets and
burn them as candles in the bloodied moonlight.

emily dickinson’s attic

by Doug Draime

they tell me in their mimeo letter
that they can’t consider
my poetry unless i send $2 for
their magazine. “those serious about
properly placing their work with us
should first examine a copy”
is how it read. i didn’t have $2 to spare
right then & if i did, the last thing
on god’s green earth i’d spend it on
would be a literary magazine
which demands money.
“we automatically reject poems with
cummingesque affections and any moralistic
poems” it went on to say.
some poems
i write
are in
lower
case
&
some
are
indeed considered
“moralistic”
like
this
thought:
you are living in emily dickinson’s
attic for
the sake of literary
posterity,
ironing
her freshly
washed
&
bleached lace
panties
&
playing
scrabble
with a muse
with tunnel vision
who is
wearing a straight jacket.
i send these
guys
just to piss ‘em off,
some more lower case/
moralistic
poems
&
an
i.
o.
u.
for
2
bucks

June and July 1968 Revisited

for Brenda Z.

Handing me the fur preserved inside
crystal, you said it was the fur of
Mozart’s childhood dog.

Shouting obscenities from inside the
mausoleum of your perverted Uncle Stach.

Your name written all over Brooklyn in bars
from Sheepheads Bay to lower Flatbush, written
with a shaky hand, by a guy who once worshipped
the ground you walked on.

Inside that taxi with the pretty Mexican girl driver
in Vegas at 4:30 a.m.; you with your head in my lap.
How could I stop you? How could I ever want to?
I caught the taxi drivers eyes more than once
observing your delightful and shameful exhibition;
at times her eyes looking deeply and lustfully
into mine.

On Venice beach slapping you awake again and again,
valium and Mountain Red wine heaving from you like
a rusty kitchen facet. Afterwards, you screaming Jim
Morrison’s name for half an hour out over the black midnight
Pacific.

I stood there and stared down 4 Satan’s Disciples,
their bikes revving 5 feet from me. They said you
belonged to Russ. They knew I had the .38 against my back,
and they knew I meant it. Now, she belongs to me, I said.

You found me at The Carolina Pines with Tina and then
you threw my plate of spaghetti at the waitress, who
had asked you to leave for yelling and kicking at Tina.

You buried a medallion deep in the red earth of
Topanga Canyon. Telling me crazed Rasputin once
wore it, then masturbated on it before giving it to one
of his followers, who smuggled it out of Russia and
it’s been in your family ever since...your family of
crazed Russian Jews.

I stood with you on the corner of Sunset & Vine boulevards
that night you ridiculed Johnny Mathis and one of his
friends, as they walked out of the Sunset Towers. He
threw you the finger and said he was calling the cops.

And your tears which fell on hearing about the death
of Sadie, who fixed up one too many times. You cried for
hours. I sat in that bean bag chair in your apartment on
Hoover Boulevard holding your shaking body, your
trembling soul.

by Doug Draime

my folks

if they could see or hear me now
would probably ask are you okay son?
are you depressed again?
drinking again?
are you talking to someone about it?
why don’t you call that nice man frank
did you ever thank that nice lady bev?
she was so good to you. you should. etc.
& i'd probably get angry, lose my temper
& shout down the phone
stop talking at me like i'm a child
i'm a man for christ’s sake. jesus.
but i wouldn't tell them about this gig
& how i need to write it out
get to the truth of something, mine
like a dog sniffing its shit
in the park or the streets
& really
if i have any relationship
with these good people
it's a strained & distant one
with lots of pain & grief
ahead
concerning stuff i never said

by paul harrison

THAT DAY, MY BIRTHDAY

by Lyn Lifshin

I think of my mother,
small suitcase packed,
the ride down steep
Barre hills to the Catholic
hospital. I’ll have my
first child here she
vowed when the nuns
brought her mother back
from near death, dead
in the newspapers, almost
dead under a cross where
later the nun would
say “you pray in our way
and I’ll pray in mine.
Did my mother think of
her mother on that
day? My father, unread-
able probably in a
dark derby. Did she
think of the man she
truly loved, eloping
instead with my father,
she’d heard the Lipmans
made good husbands
and fathers. Plus, he was
Jewish, had a job.
When I am older than
she got to be, if I do,
will I still long for her
to rub my back, bring me
a glass of water, promise
if I can’t sleep to
call her?